Reconstruction of paleoenvironment using calcium carbonate archives provides important information for understanding the climate system. Advances in geochemical techniques including dating and proxy development over the past few decades have allowed these archives to be used to even more effectively.

This session welcomes contributions in two particular areas: the marine realm and speleothems. Marine calcium carbonate archives might include, but are not limited to, coral skeletons, foraminiferal tests and bivalves each providing contrasting information for understanding the links between the ocean and the climate system. Speleothem records have been developed from vast regions and their comparisons to the datasets from ice cores, marine sediments and others have considerably improved our understanding of regional-to-global climate systems and their dynamics.

However, while the traditional interpretations on speleothem oxygen isotopic data have been continuously challenged, the development of other proxies, including carbon isotopic ratios, trace element concentrations, and inclusion constituents, has been slow. For this session, we invite contributions on cave and marine records from low to high latitudes, with common or new, multi-proxy approaches. We particularly welcome field observations, lab simulations and technique development that address proxy interpretation, and we also encourage proxy-model syntheses that provide insights on physical mechanisms of climate systems. Presentations of technical advances are also greatly encouraged.

Ocean circulation is an important part of the Earth system, playing a key role in controlling or responding to climate change. With limited direct observations for ocean currents and mixing, geochemical tracers are a valuable tool for reconstructing ocean circulation, past and present. Increasingly, such tracers are being incorporated into complex numerical climate models, the observational database is being expanded, and better knowledge of what influences the geochemical archives is being gained.

These recent improvements in modeling and measuring tracers enable a more thorough understanding of ocean-climate interactions on a range of timescales. For this session, we invite contributions that use measured and/or modeled geochemical tracers to constrain ocean dynamics in the past and present. We particularly encourage submissions that link changes in ocean circulation and mixing with surface climate.